Current Events

A Westchester County business “has repeatedly been contaminated” with the potentially life-threatening listeria bacterium, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office says in a civil lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The Smokehouse of New York, located in Mamaroneck, has had listeria monocytogenes outbreaks due to a “persistent failure to operate their business in compliance with federal health standards,” the office alleges.

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Wang Jianfeng has been on an epic acquisition tear over the past decade, assembling a formidable auto parts empire in China with $4 billion in revenue.

Now, the 46-year-old Wang, founder and chairman of Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp., is about to pull off his biggest deal yet: a $1.59 billion takeover of Takata Corp., the troubled air-bag maker that filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday and is in the midst of the largest auto recall in history.

To keep his anxiety under control, Peter, a 35-year-old government employee, relied for nine years on a blue-and-white pill he popped every night before bed: Cymbalta, made by Eli Lilly & Co. When a generic version came on the market, offering the chance to save money, he switched.

It didn’t work out. The old symptoms of anxiety resurfaced, along with some entirely new ones: “Irritability, and also it kind of felt like a blanket over your brain the whole time.” It didn’t occur to Peter to blame the medicine -- he assumed it was the same as what he’d been taking all along.

General Motors Co has reached a settlement to resolve lawsuits by 203 plaintiffs over defective ignition switches in many of its vehicles, lawyers for the automaker said in a court filing on Friday.

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Teleflex (NYSE:TFX) subsidiary Vascular Solutions today updated on a voluntary recall of its Venture Catheters over issues with excess material on the devices, saying that the FDA labeled it as a Class I recall, it’s most serious designation for recalls.

Class I recall designations, the FDA’s most serious classification of recall, are used when there is a reasonable probability that product use could cause serious adverse health consequences or death.

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Meet the "Mad Men" of the new millennium.

This legion of pill-peddling pitchmen launched a campaign that became a multi-billion dollar success — and, critics say, an unmitigated national disaster.

Since 1995, when the federal government approved Purdue Pharma's new opioid OxyContin, the nation’s drug manufacturers enjoyed a windfall of profits.

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Japanese air-bag manufacturer Takata filed for bankruptcy protection late Sunday. The company has faced massive costs associated with defective air bags, which can explode upon deployment, hurling fiery shrapnel into drivers and passengers. The defect, which triggered the largest recall in U.S. history, been linked to at least 16 deaths and more than 180 injuries.
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Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) issued a field safety notice in May, warning users that keypad buttons on its MiniMed 640G insulin pump may become temporarily stuck when the atmospheric pressure around the pump suddenly increases or decreases – like during air travel.

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Car seat and stroller manufacturer Britax announced this week that it is recalling more than 200,000 car seats after customers reported that seats’ chest clips can break, posing a choking hazard for young children.

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ALBANY — More victims of misdiagnosed cancer are about to get their day in court.

The Legislature on Wednesday passed a scaled-back version of Lavern’s Law that would start the window to bring medical malpractice cases involving cancer when an error is discovered by the patient, not when the mistake occurred, as under current law.

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C.R. Bard (NYSE:BCR) and several subsidiaries of Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) unit Covidien settled more than 130 product liability lawsuits brought over pelvic mesh products.

The lawsuits were part of multi-district litigation being overseen in the U.S.
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